Preaching to the Choir

I was watching some movie a couple days ago that contained a scene taking place during a Sunday sermon. It struck me that preachers are the spiritual forebears of bloggers. Every Sunday, a preacher gets up and pontificates to an audience on whatever topic the preacher desires, linked only by a general continuing theme (supplied by the pertinent religion). One week, it's "Our religion tells us this about loving our family." The next week, it's "Our religion tells us this about work." The preacher could get up and tell the flock what their religion tells them about fast food. Or sports teams. Or whatever the hell the preacher wants.

That's blogging.

The preacher has two huge advantages over schmuck bloggers like me. First, the preacher has an audience that believes it may be eternally damned if it doesn't listen to the damned sermon. No Sitemeter is necessary for these preachers; if attendance is low, they can sprinkle their sermons with a few choice words about fire and brimstone to guarantee standing-room-only next week. Schmuck bloggers have to rely on content. Yuck.

The second big advantage is that preachers are expected, generally, to come up with their content once per week. They get a whole fricking week to think about a pet peeve, and then just a half-hour to talk about it. Now that's a cush job.

Which brings me to me. Damn, I'm lazy. I am not even going to make excuses about being busy, blah blah blah. When a blogger posts an entry like that, it's the surest sign the blog is just beginning to amass a record-setting collection of dust. No, I have time.

I have no excuses. But, if you've made it this far along in my masturbatory rant, you deserve a hack. Filofax -- even in A5 garb -- is a small format. The calendar pages, in particular, require some compression of thought and expression. If, like me, you are a former user of a Device, then you may be accustomed to unlimited virtual storage in your calendar. Confined to paper, however, you can't make every appointment include every last datum about every last detail.

Or can you? I use cross-referencing. I have numbered every blank page in my "Notes" section. When I make a calendar entry that requires more data than allowed by calendar space, I put the rest of the data on a page in the Notes section. Then, in the calendar entry, I make a notation like "5" "5B" (page 5 or page 5, back). Whammo, blammo. Quick, painless access to storage space of unlimited expansion capability.